It can be easy to forget how the world viewed things before photography. Until the invention of photography, wars were viewed as remote and rather exciting to the people at home far removed from the events taking place. Details of war were learned through delayed and biased news accounts or from returning soldiers. There were paintings and poems as well.

The British campaigns in the Crimean War of the 1850s were among the first to be extensively documented by photograph. This was a disastrous war for Great Britain.